1. Field of the Invention
This disclosure relates to systems for providing content to patients who have been prescribed medications, specifically to systems which can provide content at or prior to the point of dispensing of the medication and may provide ongoing dialogue between a patient and a medication provider.
2. Description of the Related Art
Advances in pharmaceuticals in recent times have led to the effective treatment for many disorders which only a few years ago had no available treatment. While these medications can be invaluable to those who need them, they can also be difficult to use correctly and may be benefited in their efficacy by other changes in a patient's lifestyle outside the control of their physician. Many medications today are not single dose wonder drugs, but require adherence to a schedule of medication and lifestyle adjustment to be most effective. Sometimes these schedules require a patient to follow complex usage instructions with multiple medications taken at regular time intervals.
One of the biggest problems with the use of modern pharmaceuticals is to make sure that the patient uses them correctly so that they are safe and effective. Further, a patient often needs to be educated that the medication may not solve the underlying problem without the patient making more fundamental changes to their lifestyle. After a medication is dispensed, neither a pharmacist, physician, or pharmaceutical manufacturer has much control over the actions of a patient and incorrect use of the medication can not only result in ineffective treatment, but a condition becoming resistant to a medication. The misuse of medications can arise from a variety of causes ranging from persons being unable to maintain a medication's prescribed schedule, to purposefully taking smaller doses to make medications last longer, to people simply misunderstanding complicated usage instructions, to medications lacking efficacy and requiring adjunct or alternate medications, to medications being resold on secondary markets or otherwise abused.
To deal with these and other problems, pharmaceutical manufacturers and physicians have been trying to provide better information to patients so that patients understand how the medications need to be used to be most effective and how their therapies can be managed most effectively. Further, there is a recognition in the medical community that a medication may not be a “magic bullet” to solve a condition, but may be an aid, that when combined with lifestyle changes, can get a patient to recover from the condition quicker, or can make it easier for them to live with the condition.
The provision of information to the ultimate patient of the medication has proven to be a problematic issue, however. Often medication information is confusing and difficult to read. Further, informational packets provided to a doctor or pharmacist by a pharmaceutical manufacturer to be provided to a patient may be misplaced or not given out correctly. Further, recently both pharmacists and physicians have been subjected to decreased reimbursements from insurance companies and other payors for their services. This has resulted in their need to increase the volume of cases they handle to maintain profits at a functional level, which has, in turn, resulted in them being unable to spend as much time with each patient and therefore less time discussing information related to indicated medications with patients. For these reasons, among others, it is desirable to provide information in a form where there is little chance for human forgetfulness in providing the information with the medication whenever possible, and in a form that allows pharmacists and physicians to provide more information in less time by providing information that the patient can study at home or at another convenient time.
Another issue related to modern medication is the increase in generics and competitive brands and the need for original medication manufacturers to brand a medication and build customer loyalty to be able to recoup research and development expenses. Modern medications can require a massive investment for research and development as well as large investments for production and distribution. Further, educational programs for physicians to instruct them in how to provide the medication to appropriate patients also require a large investment by the medication manufacturer. These costs are generally intended to be made up by medication sales. However, if another brand enters the market which is able to maintain lower costs by utilizing the investment already made by the first medication company, the original innovator may be unable to effectively compete leading to there being less development as investments cannot be returned.
Medication companies can attempt to recoup investments by patenting medications, but also will utilize branding to try and distinguish their product from other competitive products. Branding with trademarks is a well recognized process in all facets of goods. However, branding requires investments in advertising to bring the brand to the awareness of the consumer. Further, most pharmaceutical companies do not have a single brand, but utilize many brands. Building customer loyalty to products can also help to offset costs by having a pharmaceutical consumer not only purchase a particular product from the manufacturer, but to also purchase other products that s/he may need as well.
Provision of information related to the drug can be beneficial if provided at the pharmacy. Such benefits can also carry over into over-the-counter (OTC) medications. OTC products can be useful, or harmful, in combination with prescription drugs, and, in some cases, in place of prescription drugs. OTC products can also be useful in treating side effects from prescription drug use.
In order to provide usage and other information to medication consumers regarding both prescription and OTC products at the pharmacy, many pharmacies have adopted systems for providing pharmacy information sheets such as those described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,240,394 and 6,067,524, the entire disclosures of which are herein incorporated by reference, to use with the distribution of medications. The problem with these systems, however, is that they are cumbersome to pharmacists and require the inclusion of significant additional computer hardware which takes up space at the pharmacy. Further, these “add-on” systems can break down leaving the systems non-functional until service technicians outside the pharmacy come in and repair or replace them. Further, these systems impose capital expenses, increased maintenance, and other problems on those providing the pharmacy information sheets which necessarily increases the costs of providing the services. The systems are generally redundant between pharmacies and are operationally inefficient as the systems rely on mechanisms which provide for unnecessary complexity.
The systems also only provide information at the point of sale of the medication. This is often too late as by the time the patient will review the material they have left the pharmacy and already own the medication.